Research by Chao Liu, Kimberly Gray and others Reveal New Ways to Convert CO₂ to Valuable Products

Abstract:

A bit of the old ultraviolet: The use of vacuum UV (VUV) irradiation in processes that convert CO₂ into useful products remains largely unexplored. VUV‐initiated CO₂ reduction can achieve excellent conversion under common photochemical reaction conditions when H₂ and non‐reducible oxides are present. Infrared spectroscopy provides evidence for a chain reaction initiated by VUV‐induced CO₂ splitting, which is enhanced in the presence of H₂ and silica.

The basic spin is that we found that you can use light and a material as common as sand (SiO₂) to convert CO₂ into a useful product (CO) and ultimately this knowledge could lead to creating closed loop C-cycles — that is what we were trying to illustrate with the picture.  

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